An analysis of global conflicts and international events by the scrutiny of reason

Monthly Archives: April 2010

Would Edward Luce and Daniel Dombey, and by implication Clemons, expect Robert Gibbs to say that Barack Obama agrees “with what Senator Schumer said? It is astonishing to see Clemons diverting the issue of the total freeze of settlements, which Schumer correctly criticized as a grave error on the part of Obama contra Israel, to what Schumer’s stand was to Jesse Helms and to John Bolton “few years ago.”

Clemons is entitled to his opinions but he is not entitled to his facts. The facts are that the foolish imposition of the total freeze of settlements on the Netanyahu government by the Obama administration’s lack of foresight that it would be politically unrealizable for Israel and that it would evolve and become for the Palestinians, as it did, a rigid condition for their participation with any talks with Israel, was the major factor that derailed Obama’s engine of diplomacy from its track that would bring the two belligerents to the negotiating table. It was precisely this quintessentially wrong and injudicious policy of Obama that Senator Schumer rightly criticized as being the reason of the administration’s abysmal failure in the Middle East. Another fact is that Obama’s diplomacy is inconsistent, rewarding his enemies and penalizing his friends. While he claims that his diplomacy is indiscriminate and is based on soft and smart power coming on doves’ feet and extends his hand in a velvet glove to the enemies of America, he carries a bludgeon in his hand in his relations with his strongest and most loyal ally, in this case Israel.

Throughout history there has never been a case when a nation engaged in war with implacable enemies would chastise and alienate its most steadfast and reliable ally for the purpose to placate its enemies. Obama will go down in history as the only leader who not only doltishly and doggedly opened the door of diplomacy to an enemy such as Iran which has been training in its own country members of the Taliban and supplying them with weapons–as well as its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah–to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan, but who was also willing to sacrifice the vital interests of his most staunch ally against Islamist terror, Israel, on the altar of this spineless, strategically unprincipled, and totally fallible diplomacy.

Kotzabasis, WigWag seemed to be wondering a few days ago why those posts in which you make a serious, debatable point are ignored. But can there be any doubt why people habitually turn you off, when so many of your posts consist in cowardly, third-person personal characterizations of other contributors, lamely shouted out to no one in particular?

Actually why the interesting point Kotz made is never debated is rather plain. His point was an astute one, but as I am sure Kotz would be the first to admit, it was hardly an original one. Kotz was making precisely the same point Schumer was; that by offering to conduct their negotiations for them, the Obama Administration provides an incentive for the Palestinians not to negotiate at all. Kotz, Schumer and many other sage observers have also made the point that by making demands on Israel that Obama knew, or should have known, that it wouldn’t comply with, it was Obama himself who was making his stated goal of getting negotiations started much more difficult.

Steve Clemons in his diatribe against Schumer never responded to this point and Dan Kervick hasn’t either. Neither has any other serious commentator as far as I can tell.

It seems to me that the lack of response to the Schumer/Kotz allegation is evidence of the fact that the point is irrefutable.

The following piece was written and published on November 2003. I’m republishing it on this blog hoping its readers will find it to be of some interest.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The tragic bombing of the residential compound in Riyadh by Muslim terrorists that killed and maimed a large number of their fellow Muslims from Egypt, Jordan,Lebanon, Sudan, and Syria, who were guest workers in Saudi Arabia, can serve as a “god-send” vengeance against global terror. This fanatic and stupid action of the terrorists against brother Muslims, is a huge fillip for strategists against global terror and must be used by them creatively and imaginatively, to stem the deadly flow of recruits into its murderous arms. This opportune moment handed out by this breathtaking dull-witted action of the terrorists, must be utilized swiftly, not losing a moment, by the strategists against global terror, and all its political advantages be turned into a battering-ram that will breach the walls of breeding terrorism.

The strategy will involve, in addition to defeating active terrorism, the simultaneous goal of defeating also future terror, by the eradication of the nests that breed it, i.e. the radical Islamist schools which propagate terror, and furnish their students with an “armor of belief” that makes it easy for them to sacrifice themselves in Jihadist actions.

The policy will comprise the following: (a) The coaxing and encouragement of the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, and Jordan, to pass a decree prohibiting schools from propagating radical Islamist teachings, and to punish the imams who continue to do so with the most severe punishments. In case that some schools however, covertly continue to spawn the radical teachings of the fundamentalists, they will be closed down. Politically, except perhaps for the latter, this will not be difficult to be done by these governments, as the overwhelming majority of their populations are completely affronted and outraged by this terrorist attack against their fellow Muslims, and will support their governments’ action, or at the least will be quiescent about it. Moreover, such action on the part of these governments will be both in their own interests and in the interests of their own people. However, in regards to the closing of these schools, before such a drastic step is taken, America, Europe, and the economically developed countries of Asia, should immediately set up an international body with the authority of building schools in these Muslim countries quickly, with the purpose of accommodating the students from the closed schools. Consequently, none of the above governments which took this radical step of closing down these fundamentalist schools, could be accused of depriving the youth of their countries from getting an education.

(b)The building and running of these schools will be funded by an international entity, which could be named the International Global Fund For Education ( IGFFE ), whose financial resources will come from global corporations and from governments of the economically developed countries. (The funding of the IGFFE by global corporations will have the additional benefit of showing the benign face of globalization -that it does care for the poor of the world, and will serve as a counter argument to the detractors of globalization.)

Such a policy would contribute immensely to the defeat of global terror, and I repeat, it should be put in place speedily in this opportune moment that has been provided by the terrorists, by their moronic bombing of the Arab quarters in Riyadh.

The war against terror must not only be taken where the active terrorists are, but it must also be taken to the breeding grounds of terrorism, i.e. to the radical Islamist schools, both in the East and in the West. Moreover, this is a favorable and advantageous moment for the newly established covert commando “hit” squad of the CIA, to be hittinghard– as I’ve suggested twice in the past to high officials of the U.S. Administration – the preachers of radical fundamentalist Islam wherever they are.

The crashing of this infamy can only be accomplished by taking ab ovo, extreme, iron-fisted measures against these schools of fanaticism and their preachers. The most effective means of defeating terror is to put the fear of terror into their own hearts. The West cannot rest until the breeding nests of terrorism are torn apart.

Yes Nadine, Norheim is pretentiously “morally pure” as any person of inveterate weakness would be. You have noticed of course that whenever he finds himself deplete of cogent arguments he resorts to smart ‘Alecry’, as above. And you must have noticed that Kervick too, the disciple of David Hume is not immune from this intellectually debilitating disease, as his above laconic comment reveals. And his hypocrisy in his “quick question” is astounding, as if his own cascading passionate defence and suggestions of where America’s real interests lie could be supplanted by “…no other life.”

Passion and intellect are vital forces of human action and envelope one’s life. And their value depends on the aims and goals one expends them on. Nadine expends them passionately by defending the justified concerns of Israel of being deluged and destroyed by fanatical Islam and in protecting an outpost of Western civilization in the midst of resurgent barbarity from the malevolence of the prattling and historically ignorant classes that for a long time now attempt to turn the defender against aggression, Israel, into the aggressor. Norheim and Kervick, likewise, are passionately expending these vital forces for their own aims and goals. The difference being between Nadine and Norheim-Kervick that while the former is fighting injustice and malignity the latter are fighting for their manmade phantoms and for the cause of black magic. As their Archimedean point for ‘shifting the world’ is no other than the voodoo politics of a bygone ‘progressive’ demi-monde socialist era.

Kotzabasis’ intellectual mission at the Washington Note seems
to be to weaken Dan K., Steve C. and myself. I think he’s been
working on this for a couple of years now. Steve creates a new
post, the commenters argue about the topic, and in comes Kotz
saying that we are weak and delusional.

By claiming that we are weak, not strong, Kotz somehow
expects that we get weaker than we were before he made his
claim. And by repeating this claim, by typing it again and again
from somewhere in Australia, and posting it on a thread read
thousands of miles from his home, he hopes that we slowly get
weaker and weaker. Voodoo!

Although I can’t speak on behalf of Dan and Steve, I would like
to inform Kotzabasis and TWN’s readers that it actually works. I
have no idea how (there must be some black magic going on
here), but immediately after reading Kotz’s last post, I felt
weaker! And I also felt Kotz’s increased strength. Weird!

Repeat your claim once a week, Kotz, and I’ll be completely
paralyzed around June or July. And you yourself will gain an
enormous intellectual strength and willpower; before Christmas,
you’ll become a veritable intellectual Superman in your fight
against Islamo-fascism and the delusional left.

Paul, it turns out that one only needs to change two proper names in a famous poem by William Blake to capture Kotzabasis’s sentiment fairly clearly:
______

Mock on, mock on, Kervick, Norheim:
Mock on, mock on: ‘tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.

And every sand becomes a Gem,
Reflected in the beam divine;
Blown back they blind the mocking Eye,
But still in Israel’s paths they shine.

The Atoms of Democritus
And the Newton’s Particles of Light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright.

Kotzabasis says,

Kervick

It would be insolent to argue against the great poet William Blake. But you forget that the wind is ‘contrarian’ and can blow Aeolus like the other way and “blind” the mocked eye. And that is why you cannot see “Israel’s tents” shining “so bright.”

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Critics of the War

The Liberal political courtesans Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, not to mention the less charming ones of the New York Times, provocatively egged on by their young 'madam' Arthur Sulzberger, are transforming the sweetness of their profession into the bitterness of their politics against the war.

"If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles."
Karl Von Clausewitz